Newsletter

Closure of Augusta's mail processing center postponed

Augusta’s mail processing center received a temporary reprieve Thursday from the U.S. Postal Service.

The Augusta facility was not on a list of 140 mail processing centers across the nation that will be part of an initial phase of closures and consolidations starting this summer.

It remains among another 89 consolidations scheduled to begin in February 2014, “unless the circumstances of the Postal Service change in the interim,” according to a statement released by the Postal Service.

Eleven other mail processing facilities in Georgia and one in South Carolina were included in the list.

“We revised our network consolidation timeline to provide a longer planning schedule for our customers, employees and other stakeholders, and to enable a more methodical and measured implementation,” Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe said in the statement.

Consolidating operations – which mostly involve transferring mail-processing operations from smaller to larger facilities – will begin this summer and are expected to be completed in February. Because of the high volume of mail predicted for the November election and holiday mailing seasons, consolidations will not take place from September through December, the statement said.

Augusta’s mail processing facility had been identified in a feasibility study released earlier this year as one of the centers to be closed. The study proposed splitting the Augusta plant’s mail processing work between facilities in Macon, Ga., and Columbia.